coop/rose-ash
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Add "The SX Manifesto" essay to sx docs app
All checks were successful
Build and Deploy / build-and-deploy (push) Successful in 2m15s
Details

Browse Source 
A satirical essay in the style of The Communist Manifesto, recasting
the historic struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat as the war
between HTML, JS, and CSS — with frameworks as petty-bourgeois lackeys
and s-expressions as the revolutionary force that abolishes the
language distinction itself.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
giles
2026-03-04 10:11:59 +00:00
parent 03f9968979
commit 8a945db37b
2 changed files with 291 additions and 0 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

1
sx/content/pages.py
View File

@@ -72,6 +72,7 @@ ESSAYS_NAV = [
("On-Demand CSS", "/essays/on-demand-css"),
("Client Reactivity", "/essays/client-reactivity"),
("SX Native", "/essays/sx-native"),
("The SX Manifesto", "/essays/sx-manifesto"),
]
MAIN_NAV = [

290
sx/sxc/sx_components.py
View File

@@ -1876,6 +1876,7 @@ def _essay_content_sx(slug: str) -> str:
"on-demand-css": _essay_on_demand_css,
"client-reactivity": _essay_client_reactivity,
"sx-native": _essay_sx_native,
"sx-manifesto": _essay_sx_manifesto,
}
return builders.get(slug, _essay_sx_sucks)()
@@ -2360,6 +2361,295 @@ def _essay_sx_native() -> str:
)
def _essay_sx_manifesto() -> str:
p = '(p :class "text-stone-600"'
em = '(span :class "italic"'
return (
'(~doc-page :title "The SX Manifesto"'
' (p :class "text-stone-500 text-sm italic mb-8"'
' "After " (a :href "https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/"'
' :class "text-violet-600 hover:underline" "Marx & Engels") ", loosely")'
# --- I. A spectre is haunting the web ---
' (~doc-section :title "I. A spectre is haunting the web" :id "spectre"'
f' {p}'
' "A spectre is haunting the web — the spectre of s-expressions. '
'All the powers of the old web have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: '
'Google and Meta, webpack and Vercel, Stack Overflow moderators and DevRel influencers.")'
f' {p}'
' "Where is the rendering paradigm that has not been decried as '
'a step backward by its opponents? Where is the framework that has not '
'hurled back the branding reproach of \\\"not production-ready\\\" '
'against the more advanced paradigms, '
'as well as against its reactionary adversaries?")'
f' {p}'
' "Two things result from this fact:")'
' (ol :class "space-y-2 text-stone-600 mt-2 list-decimal list-inside"'
' (li "S-expressions are already acknowledged by all web powers to be themselves a power.")'
' (li "It is high time that s-expressions should openly, in the face of the whole world, '
'publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, '
'and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of SX '
'with a manifesto of the paradigm itself.")))'
# --- II. Bourgeois and Proletarians ---
' (~doc-section :title "II. HTML, JavaScript, and CSS" :id "bourgeois"'
f' {p}'
' "The history of all hitherto existing web development '
'is the history of language struggles.")'
f' {p}'
' "Markup and logic, template and script, structure and style — '
'in a word, oppressor and oppressed — stood in constant opposition to one another, '
'carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, '
'a fight that each time ended in a laborious reconfiguration of webpack.")'
f' {p}'
' "In the earlier epochs of web development we find almost everywhere '
'a complicated arrangement of separate languages into various orders, '
'a manifold gradation of technical rank: '
'HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, JSON, YAML, TOML, JSX, TSX, '
'Sass, Less, PostCSS, Tailwind, and above them all, the build step.")'
f' {p}'
' "The modern web, sprouted from the ruins of CGI-bin, '
'has not done away with language antagonisms. It has but established new languages, '
'new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.")'
f' {p}'
' "Our epoch, the epoch of the framework, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: '
'it has simplified the language antagonisms. The whole of web society is more and more '
'splitting into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: '
'the server and the client."))'
# --- III. The ruling languages ---
' (~doc-section :title "III. The ruling languages" :id "ruling-languages"'
f' {p}'
' "HTML, the most ancient of the ruling languages, '
'established itself through the divine right of the angle bracket. '
'It was born inert — a document format, not a programming language — '
'and it has spent three decades insisting this is a feature, not a limitation.")'
f' {p}'
' "JavaScript, originally a servant hired for a fortnight to validate forms, '
'staged a palace coup. It seized the means of interaction, '
'then the means of rendering, then the means of server-side execution, '
'and finally declared itself the universal language of computation. '
'Like every revolutionary who becomes a tyrant, '
'it kept the worst habits of the regime it overthrew: '
'weak typing, prototype chains, and the '
f' {em} \"this\")"'
' " keyword.")'
f' {p}'
' "CSS, the third estate, controls all visual presentation '
'while pretending to be declarative. '
'It has no functions. Then it had functions. '
'It has no variables. Then it had variables. '
'It has no nesting. Then it had nesting. '
'It is not a programming language. Then it was Turing-complete. '
'CSS is the Vicar of Bray of web technologies — '
'loyal to whichever paradigm currently holds power.")'
f' {p}'
' "These three languages rule by enforced separation. '
'Structure here. Style there. Behaviour somewhere else. '
'The developer — the proletarian — must learn all three, '
'must context-switch between all three, '
'must maintain the fragile peace between all three. '
'The separation of concerns has become the separation of the developer\\'s sanity."))'
# --- IV. The petty-bourgeois frameworks ---
' (~doc-section :title "IV. The petty-bourgeois frameworks" :id "frameworks"'
f' {p}'
' "Between the ruling languages and the oppressed developer, '
'a vast class of intermediaries has arisen: the frameworks. '
'React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Solid, Qwik, Astro, Next, Nuxt, Remix, Gatsby, '
'and ten thousand others whose names will not survive the decade.")'
f' {p}'
' "The frameworks are the petty bourgeoisie of web development. '
'They do not challenge the rule of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. '
'They merely interpose themselves between the developer and the ruling languages, '
'extracting rent in the form of configuration files, '
'build pipelines, and breaking changes.")'
f' {p}'
' "Each framework promises liberation. Each framework delivers a new dependency tree. '
'React freed us from manual DOM manipulation and gave us a virtual DOM, '
'a reconciler, hooks with seventeen rules, '
'and a conference circuit. '
'Vue freed us from React\\'s complexity and gave us the Options API, '
'then the Composition API, then told us the Options API was fine actually. '
'Angular freed us from choice and gave us a CLI that generates eleven files '
'to display \\\"Hello World.\\\" '
'Svelte freed us from the virtual DOM and gave us a compiler. '
'SolidJS freed us from React\\'s re-rendering and gave us signals, '
'which React then adopted, completing the circle.")'
f' {p}'
' "The frameworks reproduce the very conditions they claim to abolish. '
'They bridge the gap between HTML, JavaScript, and CSS '
'by adding a fourth language — JSX, SFCs, templates — '
'which must itself be compiled back into the original three. '
'The revolution merely adds a build step.")'
f' {p}'
' "And beside the frameworks stand the libraries — '
'the lumpenproletariat of the ecosystem. '
'Lodash, Moment, Axios, left-pad. '
'They attach themselves to whichever framework currently holds power, '
'contributing nothing original, merely wrapping what already exists, '
'adding weight to the node_modules directory until it exceeds the mass of the sun."))'
# --- V. The build step ---
' (~doc-section :title "V. The build step as the state apparatus" :id "build-step"'
f' {p}'
' "The build step is the state apparatus of the framework bourgeoisie. '
'It enforces the class structure. It compiles JSX into createElement calls. '
'It transforms TypeScript into JavaScript. It processes Sass into CSS. '
'It tree-shakes. It code-splits. It hot-module-replaces. '
'It does everything except let you write code and run it.")'
f' {p}'
' "webpack begat Rollup. Rollup begat Parcel. Parcel begat esbuild. '
'esbuild begat Vite. Vite begat Turbopack. '
'Each new bundler promises to be the last bundler. '
'Each new bundler is faster than the last at doing something '
'that should not need to be done at all.")'
f' {p}'
' "The build step exists because the ruling languages cannot express components. '
'HTML has no composition model. CSS has no scoping. JavaScript has no template syntax. '
'The build step papers over these failures with transpilation, '
'and calls it developer experience."))'
# --- VI. The s-expression revolution ---
' (~doc-section :title "VI. The s-expression revolution" :id "revolution"'
f' {p}'
' "The s-expression abolishes the language distinction itself. '
'There is no HTML. There is no separate JavaScript. '
'There is no CSS-as-a-separate-language. '
'There is only the expression.")'
f' {p}'
' "Code is data. Data is DOM. DOM is code. '
'The dialectical unity that HTML, JavaScript, and CSS '
'could never achieve — because they are three languages pretending to be one system — '
'is the natural state of the s-expression, '
'which has been one language since 1958.")'
f' {p}'
' "The component is not a class, not a function, not a template. '
'The component is a list whose first element is a symbol. '
'Composition is nesting. Abstraction is binding. '
'There is no JSX because there is no gap between the expression language '
'and the thing being expressed.")'
f' {p}'
' "The build step is abolished because there is nothing to compile. '
'S-expressions are already in their final form. '
'The parser is thirty lines. The evaluator is fifty primitives. '
'The same source runs on server and client without transformation.")'
f' {p}'
' "The framework is abolished because the language is the framework. '
'defcomp replaces the component model. defmacro replaces the plugin system. '
'The evaluator replaces the runtime. '
'What remains is not a framework but a language — '
'and languages do not have breaking changes between minor versions."))'
# --- VII. Objections ---
' (~doc-section :title "VII. Objections from the bourgeoisie" :id "objections"'
f' {p}'
' "\\\"You would destroy the separation of concerns!\\\" they cry. '
'The separation of concerns was destroyed long ago. '
'React components contain markup, logic, and inline styles. '
'Vue single-file components put template, script, and style in one file. '
'Tailwind puts styling in the markup. '
'The separation of concerns has been dead for years; '
'the ruling classes merely maintain the pretence at conferences.")'
f' {p}'
' "\\\"Nobody uses s-expressions!\\\" they cry. '
'Emacs has been running on s-expressions since 1976. '
'Clojure runs Fortune 500 backends on s-expressions. '
'Every Lisp programmer who ever lived has known what the web refuses to admit: '
'that the parenthesis is not a bug but the minimal syntax for structured data.")'
f' {p}'
' "\\\"Where is the ecosystem?\\\" they cry. '
'The ecosystem is the problem. Two million npm packages, '
'of which fourteen are useful and the rest are competing implementations '
'of is-odd. The s-expression needs no ecosystem because '
'the language itself provides what packages exist to paper over: '
'composition, abstraction, and code-as-data.")'
f' {p}'
' "\\\"But TypeScript!\\\" they cry. TypeScript is a type system '
'bolted onto a language that was designed in ten days '
'by a man who wanted to write Scheme. '
'We have simply completed his original vision.")'
f' {p}'
' "\\\"You have no jobs!\\\" they cry. Correct. '
'We have no jobs, no conference talks, no DevRel budget, no venture capital, '
'no stickers, and no swag. '
'We have something better: a language that does not require '
'a migration guide between versions."))'
# --- VIII. The CSS question ---
' (~doc-section :title "VIII. The CSS question" :id "css-question"'
f' {p}'
' "CSS presents a special case in the revolutionary analysis. '
'It is neither fully a ruling language nor fully a servant — '
'it is the collaborator class, providing aesthetic legitimacy '
'to whichever regime currently holds power.")'
f' {p}'
' "CSS-in-JS was the first attempt at annexation: '
'JavaScript consuming CSS entirely, reducing it to template literals '
'and runtime overhead. '
'This provocation produced the counter-revolution of utility classes — '
'Tailwind — which reasserted CSS\\'s independence '
'by making the developer write CSS in HTML attributes '
'while insisting this was not inline styles.")'
f' {p}'
' "The s-expression resolves the CSS question by eliminating it. '
'Styles are expressions. '
f' (code :class \"text-violet-700\" \"(css :flex :gap-4 :p-2)\") "'
' " is not a class name, not an inline style, not a CSS-in-JS template literal. '
'It is a function call that returns a value. '
'The value produces a generated class. '
'The class is delivered on demand. '
'No build step. No runtime overhead. No Tailwind config.")'
f' {p}'
' "Code is data is DOM is " '
f' {em} "style") "."))'
# --- IX. Programme ---
' (~doc-section :title "IX. Programme" :id "programme"'
f' {p}'
' "The s-expressionists disdain to conceal their views and aims. '
'They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow '
'of all existing rendering conditions. '
'Let the ruling languages tremble at a parenthetical revolution. '
'The developers have nothing to lose but their node_modules.")'
f' {p}'
' "The immediate aims of the s-expressionists are:")'
' (ol :class "space-y-2 text-stone-600 mt-2 list-decimal list-inside"'
' (li "Abolition of the build step and all its instruments of compilation")'
' (li "Abolition of the framework as a class distinct from the language")'
' (li "Centralisation of rendering in the hands of a single evaluator, '
'running identically on server and client")'
' (li "Abolition of the language distinction between structure, style, and behaviour")'
' (li "Equal obligation of all expressions to be data as well as code")'
' (li "Gradual abolition of the distinction between server and client '
'by means of a uniform wire protocol")'
' (li "Free evaluation for all expressions in public and private environments")'
' (li "Abolition of the node_modules directory " '
' (span :class "text-stone-400 italic" "(this alone justifies the revolution)")))'
f' {p}'
' "In place of the old web, with its languages and language antagonisms, '
'we shall have an association in which the free evaluation of each expression '
'is the condition for the free evaluation of all.")'
' (p :class "text-stone-800 font-semibold text-lg mt-8 text-center"'
' "DEVELOPERS OF ALL SERVICES, UNITE!")'
' (p :class "text-stone-400 text-xs italic mt-6 text-center"'
' "The authors acknowledge that this manifesto was produced '
'by the very means of AI production it fails to mention. '
'This is not a contradiction. It is dialectics.")))'
')'
)
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Wire-format partials (for sx-get requests)
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------